The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has published a set of principles that it says should guide policymakers in reforming the financial system.

It calls for increased transparency, more effective surveillance and greater accountability to the public, among other things.

The principles say that governments should have the legal powers to compel the collection and dissemination of data to ensure that, “comprehensive, relevant, up-to-date and internationally comparable statistics and indicators are available.”

The OECD recommends that surveillance should be strengthened, and that market failure analysis should be carried out to assess the efficiency of the system and understand evolving problems.

The principles also call for greater accountability from governments, and recommends that authorities, including regulators, should publish annual reports that give an overview of developments in the financial system, identify key risks and explain how they are addressing them.

“The systemic importance of the financial system was clearly demonstrated by the huge human and social impact of the crisis,” said OECD secretary-general, Angel Gurría. “To prevent its recurrence, we need to correct a number of failures, including of regulation, supervision, corporate governance and risk management. This is a major task and to accomplish it, we cannot rely only on incremental, piecemeal reform.”

“We must get the whole system right so that the financial sector can effectively resume its vital role in the functioning of the global economy,” he added.